GLOBAL WARMING QUOTES IV

quotations about global warming

Global warming quote

Several people have said: 'Well, isn't it a good thing that our industrial progress has produced not just carbon dioxide but sulfur aerosols, which cool us back down?' And I've always said I didn't like the idea of using acid rain to solve global warming, because those aerosols are not only bad for ecosystems when they rain acids into the lakes and streams and soils, but they're also part of the air pollutants which, when we breathe, we know from statistical tests, leads to increased lung and respiratory disease and what we call excess deaths, which sounds very clinical unless somebody in your family happens to be susceptible to that kind of air pollution. Some people want to shove it in the stratosphere--what we call geo-engineering. That at least wouldn't have health effects. But the aerosol offset is only partial. And even if it would offset the global warming almost completely, it's not going to leave the world's climate unchanged, because there'll be pockets in the world that'll actually be cooler, then other pockets much warmer, so you'll have blobs of warming and blobs of cooling. And that's a change, because our water supplies, our agriculture, and our ecosystems, they live locally, not globally. They don't care about 2 degree global mean change. They care about what happens in their region. And having regional aerosols offsetting some of the global effects is not going to prevent regions from still being disturbed. And we're still going to have climate disturbance if we try to solve global warming by regional air pollution, to say nothing of the health effects and the environmental effects of that air pollution.

STEPHEN H. SCHNEIDER

PBS interview


Global warming must be seen as an economic and security threat.

KOFI ANNAN

interview, Jun. 23, 2009


The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can.

STEPHEN HAWKING

ABC News interview, Aug. 16, 2006

Tags: Stephen Hawking


Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Oscar acceptance speech, 2016


Global warming -- at least the modern nightmare vision -- is a myth. I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy makers are not.

DAVID BELLAMY

Daily Mail, July 9, 2004

Tags: David Bellamy


For innovators who find safe and workable solutions to global warming, the rewards will be staggering.

FRED KRUPP

Earth: The Sequel


The goal, the urgent necessity, is to reduce global warming pollution in the atmosphere enough to pull us back from the precipice before the changes in earth's ecosystems and weather patterns become so rapid and so vast that we will no longer be able to reverse the catastrophe.

FRED KRUPP

Earth: The Sequel


I don't like being called a denier because deniers don't believe in facts. There are no facts linking the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide with imminent catastrophic global warming there are only predictions based on complex computer models.

DAVID BELLAMY

"The Global Warming Myth", Frontier Centre for Public Policy, November 21, 2007

Tags: David Bellamy


There are very few objections to the theory as a whole; everyone in the scientific community agrees that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is on the rise, and almost everyone believes that it cannot help having some effect. To declare, as some editorialists have done, that the warming has not yet appeared and therefore the theory is wrong is like arguing that a woman hasn't yet given birth and therefore isn't pregnant.

BILL MCKIBBEN

The End of Nature


We are no longer at the point of preventing climate disaster from happening entirely -- we are now at the point of minimising the damage. And as these floods and storms are here, I think more and more people are going to be willing to stand up for themselves.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ

The Guardian, June 29, 2019


Man has reached the point where his impact on the climate can be as significant as nature's.

JOBY WARRICK

Washington Post, November 12, 1997


The messages are clear. First, global warming is not a future threat--it's the present reality, a menace not to our grandchildren but to our present civilizations. In a rational world, this is what every presidential debate would focus on.

BILL MCKIBBEN

Boston Globe, March 4, 2016


It is true that there are still some who deny that global warming is taking place, or that it constitutes a serious problem. Others, while recognizing that global warming is occurring, do not accept that it results from human activities and hence effectively deny that action can be taken to combat it. The great majority of atmospheric scientists, however, now accept that man-made emissions--chiefly, but not only, of carbon dioxide--are aggravating the so-called 'greenhouse effect', thereby causing the world to warm up to what amounts to a dangerous extent.

BARRY HOLDEN

introduction, Democracy and Global Warming


The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor.

POPE FRANCIS

Laudato Si, May 24, 2015


The various processes that lead to the end of nature have been essentially beyond human thought. Only a few people knew that carbon dioxide would warm up the world, for instance, and they were for a long time unsuccessful in their efforts to alert the rest of us. Now it is too late--not too late, as I shall come to explain, to ameliorate some of the changes and so perhaps to avoid the most gruesome of their consequences. But the scientists agree that we have already pumped enough gas into the air so that a significant rise in temperature and a subsequent shift in weather are inevitable.

BILL MCKIBBEN

The End of Nature


We don't have time to sit on our hands as our planet burns. For young people, climate change is bigger than election or re-election. It's life or death.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ

Twitter, December 20, 2018


Yes, there is still much about global warming we have to learn and research should continue. But the longer we delay, the more CO2 will build up in the atmosphere. It stays there a long time. If we wait too long before acting, we will pass a point of no return and lock ourselves into centuries of global warming. We could pass one of those dangerous tipping points that could make life very difficult. It's a risk we shouldn't take.

JIM DIPESO

speech, May 1, 2003

Tags: Jim Dipeso